The Real Trad Wives of the 20th Century (Inspired by My Nana)

My grandmother was labeled a 'Homemaker.' But Nana's role was more than a curated ideal. She was a community builder through her hard work, talent and compassion.

My grandmother, Christine Vastola Pusateri (center), with two other board members of the Ladies Auxiliary of (now) ECMC. 1956. The Buffalo News.

My husband caught me in my domestic act—stirring a leek and potato soup simmering on the stove while a loaf of rye sourdough was baking in the oven. He smirked and said, “What are you, a trad wife now?”

The trad wife is social media’s newest monstrosity. They are woman who live by outdated ideals of feminine virtue and culinary perfection, curated for public consumption. They wear feminine costumes from by-gone eras no matter the chore. My attire was a carryover from dance class: leggings, cropped hoodie, and blue grippy socks. Hardly trah-dish. I mockingly menaced him with my chef’s knife and he scurried away laughing.

But his comment did get me thinking about what a “trad wife” really meant in the era before hashtags and Instagram filters. According to the 1930s census, Dad’s mom, my Nana, was officially a “Homemaker.” But her life was not a staged photo op. The title didn’t come with a polished kitchen or the luxury of making everything look effortless. For her, “homemaking” meant real work, hard work—sometimes joyful, sometimes tedious, but always demanding.

Trad wives spend their days polishing the past to a glossy sheen, broadcasting filtered visions of homemade bread and lace curtains. But the women of my Nana’s generation weren’t performing femininity—they were excelling at the role they were allowed to play. And in my grandmother’s case, using that role to enact social change.

Short in stature and gargantuan in spirit, she was resolute with her routines. An early riser with my grandfather who went to work by dawn, she had the evening dinner made before she got ready for the day. She wore a ‘housecoat’ when she cooked. “Why would I want my clothes to smell like a diner?” she answered, when I asked.

Always in a dress – sometimes with a matching jacket, often with a hat, she slipped on her shoes, grabbed her gloves and headed for the door. Her errands were endless. Daily to the bank to deposit receipts from Poppa’s business; often to the coffee shop which she managed; sometimes to a gallery where she dropped off acrylic artwork she had painted. And that’s what she was doing in her 60s and 70s. She introduced my little sister and me to the Albright Knox Art Gallery¹ and the Buffalo History Museum, and to the tea room at Hengerer’s Department store. We wore white gloves when we went out with her.

In honor of both Women’s History Month – and her birthday, which is at the end of this month, I wanted to introduce you to the Nana I knew.

Christine grew up in Buffalo during its heyday. (Yes, Buffalo had a heyday. In fact, it was one of the most affluent cities in the country.) Her Italian parents settled in the 1st Ward of Buffalo, an unlikely neighborhood as it was mainly Irish.

Weird note: The 1st Ward had been home to the Fenian Invasion,² which was an attempt in 1866 by Irish-Americans to conquer Canada and exchange it with Great Britain for Irish independence.

Eventually her parents bought a four-bedroom Victorian just south of the Olmsted-designed Delaware Park. Nana’s earliest newspaper coverage was in 1912, when she won a scholastic award as a 5^th grader, in 1915, she was class vice president of Hutchinson Tech High School. She went on to business school and took a job as a bookkeeper. There, she met my grandfather – whose family owned the business.

Wedding Photo in February 1923. Buffalo Courier-Express.

More than 600 guests, including Buffalo’s first Catholic mayor, attended her wedding in 1923. A few years later, she and Papa built a home – just north of that Olmsted park. According to my Aunt Donna, Dad’s sister, Nana’s 1920s era house was a modern, ‘model home.’

“It had two complete flats, each with three bedrooms and two bathrooms,” Aunt Donna shared. “And it had a half-bath in the basement and a full-bath in the attic. It was stunning. The kitchen was tiny though.”

The tiny kitchen was actually a feature. Turns out gas was a game changer for kitchen design. Natural gas and even propane, meant stoves no longer needed to be clunky cast iron or mason. Nor did they need to be in the center of the house (both for warmth and to dissipate the oppressive heat). New, freestanding stoves were diminutive and looked like cabinetry. Yep, this “new” slimmed down kitchen meant food prep, cooking, and clean up was tucked away.

It was in that kitchen that I helped her cut raviolis, watched her crank out sausage, or fill cannolis. I remember being under my Nana’s elbow watching as she used her strong hands to mix her pasta dough. I asked her why she didn’t use a mixer?

“A mixer? Why would I use a mixer? When you make things by hand - you make them with love.” Characteristically, she made that lovely sentiment sound like a scold.

Unlike today’s trad wife influencers who adorn their kitchens with vintage aesthetics, Nana mastered the real thing.

But then it hit me, who was the woman before I was born? When she died in 1993 at age 91, her obituary said she was a founding member and 55-year participant of Erie County Medical Center's Volunteer Board. But that only told a fraction of the story. If you are a regular reader of this newsletter, you know I currently time travel in newspaper archives. I made an excursion to 100 years ago to research Christine Vastola Pusateri, and discovered that Nana truly was an influencer by her actions.

The two daily newspapers, the Facebook of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, called her ‘Mrs. Anthony R. Pusateri,’³ but the woman I saw was pure Nana, making things happen with her iron will and white-gloved charm. I scrolled through the archives, each of the 450 articles a breadcrumb on the trail of her life. It was like peering into someone else’s social media feed, but without the glossy filters and rehearsed captions. Only then did I realize just how much she had been doing, how deeply she had been enmeshed in her community’s fabric, almost all of it around the hospital Auxiliary.

“In 1938, nine of us, belonging to a sewing group, thought of the idea of an auxiliary for Buffalo Columbus hospital,” said my grandmother in a 1953 interview.⁴ The hospital would have two name changes, the E. Meyer Memorial in 1939, and again in 1978, when it became Erie County Medical Center, or ECMC.

Within a year the nine members became 25. They bought six sewing machines that kept busy making surgical masks, towels, even hospital linens. Needing a primary fundraiser, they started a coffee shop, and held dinners, dances, and teas.

As a public hospital, the patients often were indigent. The volunteers provided slippers and robes, candy, magazines, books, and even ran errands for them. “We knew what little extras could mean to them and yearned to ease the sorrow and heartbreak that often hovers over people who are not blessed with material comfort,” Nana said in that interview.

As the membership and funds grew, the Ladies Auxiliary, as it was originally called, redecorated wards, adding lights, draperies, televisions, and furniture; donated equipment like incubators, oxygen tents, and cardiac machines; and set up scholarship funds for the medical school.

Each year, the core team took turns leading, chairing committees, and recruiting new volunteers. The two newspapers dutifully covered every nuance of every event, naming the women involved, the tasks they undertook, even what they wore. Nana preferred black dresses and suits – some decorated with rhinestones, some covered with chiffon. One article gossiped that “Mr. and Mrs. A.R. Pusateri could be seen dancing with each other” at one of the annual dances.

I could not imagine Poppa dancing.

In 1970, she received a commendation for providing more than 700 hours of volunteer work for the hospital in a single year. Seven hundred hours.

Nana with Tim, me, and my sister at my wedding in 1992 - at one of her favorite locations - the Buffalo Historical Museum.

There wasn’t as much coverage of Nana and the volunteer board after the 1970s, when the newspapers’ Women’s pages waned, but even without the clippings I have memories of her handling the books for the coffee shop. I was probably about 12 when we were walking through the corridor of the hospital. A doctor was walking toward us. Without warning, a glove of Nana’s suddenly shot out of her hands laying at the man’s feet. He bent to pick it up and hand it to her.

Nana commented, “what a nice young man. This is my granddaughter…”

When he was out of earshot she quipped, “that’s why a lady always carries gloves.”

It was a mortifying moment at the time for me. Now I see it as her teaching me a lesson of social savviness. She used her understanding of human behaviors as a means to be a successful fundraiser and an astute business woman.

In my research of Leonora Kearney Barry, I discovered women of affluence partnered with women of labor to make their communities a better and safer place. It wasn’t about creating a vintage fantasy of womanhood. It was about building networks of real support and wielding whatever influence they had to bring about change.

Nana, like the women in the Ladies Auxiliary, were true influencers. They used their positions to influence their husbands, the powers that be, to support the causes that the women themselves found important. Where today’s trad wives cultivate their image like a brand, usually with sponsorships to go along with it, my Nana cultivated her community. Her work with the hospital auxiliary wasn’t about looking the part; it was about making things better. Not just for her family, but for anyone who needed help.

Today’s trad wives borrow the aesthetics without the struggle. Their kitchens are sets; their gestures of service, performative. But Nana’s world was a real one. And her influence? That was earned, not curated.

And in her final months, long since she had stopped driving, she remained an active volunteer “calling elderly shut-ins” to do a wellness check and make sure they didn’t need anything.

My Nana’s name was listed as a “homemaker” on the census, but that label never fit. Today’s trad wives borrow the aesthetics without the effort, romanticizing roles my grandmother lived out of necessity, not vanity. Her world wasn’t curated; it was earned. And her influence wasn’t just about making a home—it was about making a difference.

Maybe that’s what today’s trad wives are really missing: not just the right look, but the right purpose.

What I Am Reading

I just finished Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s a fictional account set in Vineland, NJ, but a secondary character in the story is Mary Treat, 19th century botanist and entymologist, which was a wonderful treat for Women’s History Month. Now onto Percival Everett’s James. Been looking forward to finally having a chance to read it. Stay tuned.

1. The Albright Knox is now known as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, representing the names of the museum's historical donors, following the 2023 completion of a two-year renovation project.

2. I can’t believe poor Canada is in our target yet again. Encyclopedia Britannica

3. This is my frequent reminder that women’s ‘Christian’ names were not used until the end of the 20th cetntury - which further erases the identity of women.

4. Columbus Hospital Volunteers Sponsor Party to Raise Funds. Buffalo Courier-Express, Jan 15 1953. (Am not sure why they continued to use the old Columbus name instead of Meyer Memorial)